Passing through the security into Vatican City, we were directed to a small Vatican City passport office, a clerk at the passport control office called the cardinal’s apartment to see if he was in, only to be told that he had come down to the office to greet us. The diminutive, white haired priest in suit and Roman collar and a simple silver cross was standing in the sun at the side of the street.
There are 224 cardinals in the Catholic Church, less than 30 of whom work year-round in Vatican City in various departments. Anyone who has attended a function at St. Peter’s could not help but be struck by the churchmen in iridescent orange-red capes and soutanes, the precedence given to cardinals in papal ceremonies, all conveying a sense that cardinals are figures of august stature. The simple dress of our Cardinal friend that day stood in stark contrast to such things. As we walked up the cobblestone roadway along the outside flank of St. Peter’s basilica towering some 450 feet above us, we could have been going through a small Italian town.
Our 85-year-old priest friend is listed in the Pontifical Directory as the “Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinal.” We knew him simply as Don [Father] Farina, who even after becoming a prince of the church, continued to sign his annual Christmas cards “Ralph.” Don Farina taught me church history in the mid 1960s, and over the years Alice, I, and our daughters visited him several times, as he gradually moved up through the ranks of clerics attached to the Vatican Library. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI appointed this quiet, self-effacing cleric to head the Vatican library. Later Pope Francis asked him to serve as a moderator of a group reviewing the Vatican Bank. Upon his official retirement in 2013, Pope Francis appointed him president of the Pontifical Commission overseeing the Vatican Bank. Somewhere in his career he had learned Japanese, and in recent years, he was named special papal envoy to the celebrations of the first centennial of the foundation of the University “Sophia” of Tokyo, Japan, in November of that same year. He was particularly pleased that in May this year Pope Francis had raised the Archbishop of Japan to the rank of cardinal.
Within Vatican City a corporate headquarters, independent country, and an enormous shrine and museum complex overlay a small community of 800 inhabitants most of whom are clergy and religious sisters. Despite the huge ceremonies that the city hosts, it is in many ways a small town with its own fire department, police force, post office — and has its own stories to tell.
The Swiss Guards know the cardinals by sight (they saluted as he passed), and a driver did not hesitate to come up to Cardinal Farina, kiss his ring, and exchange pleasantries. From the third story windows of his six-room suite we looked directly down to the roof of the St. Martha Chapel where Pope Francis celebrates mass on most days. “People expect much from me,” Cardinal Farina explained,” because I see the Pope every day. I may see him out my window every day, but that doesn’t mean I talk to him!” Adjacent to the apartment was a convent of Daughters of Charity who oversaw the rooms of the hotel for visiting bishops in which Pope Francis has set up his residence. When gatherings take place in the vast Papal Audience Hall nearby, the Pope has discovered that he can walk from his residence though the convent to the back entrance of the hall and avoid the need for an automobile. That day the realities of daily life were happening on a much smaller scale. An elderly cardinal in a wheel chair, appeared at the door, seemingly confused about where he was. Leaving us in his parlor, Don Farina gently wheeled his aging friend to the elevator and returned him to his rooms.
Upon returning, the cardinal invited us to join him in his small, black Volkswagen for a ride to the top of Vatican City. As the road twisted upward, we realized that St. Peter’s Basilica was actually cut into a significant hill that in earlier times was used for vegetable gardens, orchards and vineyards. That day Gardeners were cutting the lawns, and a young woman in white work clothes, scrubbed a small ancient Roman funeral relief cemented into the wall: a few of the 2000 workers employed in various capacities by Vatican City. We passed the tall antennas, remnants of Marconi had established powerful radio transmission towers erected by Marconi in 1931, now replaced by the internet. At the highest point of slope, a circular heliport has been laid out. Benedict XVI who retired from papacy in 2013, resides nearby, the first pope to have renounced his office in six-hundred years. Not everything we saw spoke of centuries past.
Don Farina, noted that in recent years there have been changes within Vatican City. Many positions previously held by clerics have been passed to laymen and women. The newly appointed head of the Vatican Museum is a woman, and Pope Francis’s official spokesperson is an American layman. The English edition of the Vatican’s magazine, Civilta Cattolica, is now edited and published on line from Bangkok, Thailand. The Vatican’s primary astronomical observatory is in southeast Arizona.
The car was parked, and we strolled along the base of a 9th century wall flanked by gardens. of the lawn and gardens, speaking of school times, mutual friends, and family. Every few yards in the garden was a marker or monument of some sort, some dating back to the early Christian era. It is an eminently Italian world whose a deep respect for classical roots is quite foreign to most Americans. It is a heady environment whose esthetics and cultural overlays tempts one to overlook the religious role played by the little city.
Earlier that same morning less than a 100-feet away from Cardinal Farina’s apartment, Pope Francis had spoken about salt. In his homily in the adjoining chapel with a congregation of visiting bishops and Vatican City employees, he reflected on the Gospel reminder that Christians are called to be the salt of the earth. “When you know you are salt,” the pope explained, “then you know what to do when people are unhappy, miserable and hopeless around you. Salt does not ask questions in the kitchen, the moment it is put into the pot of soup, it enters immediately and does its job; it always does its job; it never complains. You are a sweetener; a bringer of joy, not pain; a carrier of good news, not gossips; a peacemaker, not a keeper of grudges.” In such gatherings, large or small, the Vatican has always been a bully pulpit.
Eventually we returned to where we had begun. As we said our goodbyes, Don Farina gave each of us a simple blessing with his thumb tracing out the sign of the cross on our forehead. The simple gesture was the high point of an unforgettable morning.
A few moments later we had crossed onto the porch of St. Peter’s, two more visitors lost in the flow the thousands of other individuals pouring out of the great basilica. Before us 10,000 empty chairs sat under a blue Italian sky awaiting the next day’s audience.
